ASMedia SATA 6Gbps Controllers Make Their Way Into Retail

MSI PH61A-P35 motherboard with ASMedia SATA 6Gbps controller

While ASMedia has announced its new series of SATA 6Gbps controllers back in December of last year, hardware manufacturers have been slow to adopt these new solutions in their products, but it now seems like the company's ASM106x series ICs have started to make their way into quite a few SATA 6Gbps add-on cards and motherboards.

ASMedia is a subsidiary of Asus and the company is building a wide array of PCI Express bridge chips, USB and NAND Flash controllers as well as the ASM106x series of ICs which offer SATA 6Gbps connectivity.

These can be used to power stand-alone SATA 6Gbps cards as well as to add such functionality to motherboard that don't support it.

Until recently, however, hardware manufacturers have been reluctant to incorporate these controllers into their products and most have decided to go with IC's built by Marvell, which usually retail for a higher price.

But this may change soon enough, as VR-Zone has managed to spot the first two products that rely on ASMedia's chip for SATA 6Gbps connectivity.

The first one of these is built by the Taiwanese maker eMegatech and comes as an add-in card that packs a pair of SATA 6Gbps ports and is priced at the equivalent of $38 US.

The second product spotted is an upcoming MSI H61 motherboard, which is called the PH61A-P35, and it incorporates both an ASMedia USB 3.0 host controller and an ASMedia PCI Express to PCI bridge in addition to the SATA 6Gbps chip.

ASMedia's line of SATA controller is comprised out of four ICs, dubbed the ASM1060, ASM1061, ASM1062 and ASM1062R, and all, but the first one, support 6Gbps speeds.

More products based on the ASMedia controllers are expected to make their appearance during the Computex 2011 fair which will open its gates at the beginning of June.